CIA Spying On The Senate Went Much Further Than Originally Reported

from the because-of-course-it-did dept

We already covered how the CIA has admitted to and apologized for its spying on the Senate, but the CIA's official "unclassified" statement on the matter shows that what the CIA did was even worse than the initial allegations. Here's the basic summary, according to the CIA's Inspector General:

Agency Access to Files on the SSCI RDINet: Five Agency employees, two attorneys and three information technology (IT) staff members, improperly accessed or caused access to the SSCI Majority staff shared drives on the RDINet.

Agency Crimes Report on Alleged Misconduct by SSCI Staff: The Agency filed a crimes report with the DOJ, as required by Executive Order 12333 and the 1995 Crimes Reporting Memorandum between the DOJ and the Intelligence Community, reporting that SSCI staff members may have improperly accessed Agency information on the RDINet. However, the factual basis for the referral was not supported, as the author of the referral had been provided inaccurate information on which the letter was based. After review, the DOJ declined to open a criminal investigation of the matter alleged in the crimes report.

Office of Security Review of SSCI Staff Activity: Subsequent to directive by the D/CIA to halt the Agency review of SSCI staff access to the RDINet, and unaware of the D/CIA’s direction, the Office of Security conducted a limited investigation of SSCI activities on the RDINet. That effort included a keyword search of all and a review of some of the emails of SSCI Majority staff members on the RDINet system.

Lack of Candor: The three IT staff members demonstrated a lack of candor about their activities during interviews by the OIG.

So, the first bit we already knew. That's what Senator Feinstein initially revealed -- and Brennan pretended to deny, while actually admitting to the facts about them accessing the Senate Intelligence Committee's private network where they were storing documents for their investigation into the CIA's torture program.

We also knew that the CIA had bogusly reported the Senate staffers to the DOJ, claiming they had "improperly accessed" CIA information. However, now the CIA is admitting that "the factual basis for the referral was not supported." In other words, for all of Brennan's blustering about how awful the Senate staffers were and how they were breaking the law, it appears that the CIA knew they were making it up. That's really bad.

But it's the next item where things get really dicey. After all of this came out and Brennan told the CIA folks to knock it off, CIA people spied on the emails of the Senate staffers. Let's repeat that. After Feinstein had already made this public and called the CIA out on its spying of intelligence committee staff members and after Brennan told them to knock if off, the CIA went and directly spied on emails. The AP is further reporting that "the CIA used classified "hacking tools" and created a fake user account in an effort to retrieve documents the CIA believed the Senate staffers had improperly accessed."

This is a major problem, and something of a Constitutional issue, given the separation of powers. No wonder Mark Udall is demanding Brennan's resignation.

Oh, and then we find out that the CIA staffers involved "demonstrated a lack of candor" about all this during the internal investigation by the CIA? Sure, it's an intelligence agency that's built on lying, but it certainly looks like the culture of professionally lying all the time is pretty deep there. Over at Foreign Policy, Shane Harris has gone through the many statements Brennan made vehemently denying the spying. It appears that all of them were false and in some cases, blatant lies.

And, remember, this is only what the CIA has deemed worthy of revealing publicly. The full Inspector General report may be even more devastating.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, emails, john brennan, senate, senate intelligence committee, separation of powers, spying, torture report

CIA Torture Report Reveals That State Department Officials Knew About Torture; Were Told Not To Tell Their Bosses

from the loose-lips-stop-war-crimes dept

We continue to wait and wait for the White House to finish pouring black ink all over the Senate's torture report, before releasing the (heavily redacted) 480-page executive summary that the Senate agreed to declassify months ago. However, every few weeks it seems that more details from the report leak out to the press anyway. The latest is that officials at the State Department were well aware of the ongoing CIA torture efforts, but were instructed not to tell their superiors, such that it's likely that the top officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, may have been kept in the dark, while others at the State Department knew of the (highly questionable) CIA actions.

A Senate report on the CIA's interrogation and detention practices after the 9/11 attacks concludes that the agency initially kept the secretary of state and some U.S. ambassadors in the dark about harsh techniques and secret prisons, according to a document circulating among White House staff.

The still-classified report also says some ambassadors who were informed about interrogations of al-Qaida detainees at so-called black sites in their countries were instructed not to tell their superiors at the State Department, the document says.

Powell was eventually told about the program, but not until it was well underway apparently. And, of course, the CIA says that this was all perfectly normal:

The former CIA official said it would be standard practice for ambassadors informed about a covert operation to be instructed not to share it with others who did not have a "need to know," as determined by the National Security Agency. Ambassadors in countries in which the CIA set up black sites to interrogate prisoners were usually told about it, said the official....

The other interesting tidbit is that this report came from leaked "talking points" at the State Department, as they prepare for the release of the report. As we noted recently, the State Department had been making some noises about how angry this report would make lots of people -- but it appears that the latest strategy is for the State Department to "embrace" the findings and pull a "that was then, this is now" card:

The State Department wants to embrace the conclusions of the Senate report and blast the CIA's past practices, according to the document.

"This report tells a story of which no American is proud," the document says in a section entitled "Topline Messages (as proposed by State)."

"But it is also part of another story of which we can be proud," the document adds. "America's democratic system worked just as it was designed to work in bringing an end to actions inconsistent with our democratic values."

Frankly, this is probably the most sensible strategy -- and one many people have been advocating for. Everyone knows the report is damning. The best way to deal with it is to come clean, admit how wrong things were, and be much more transparent. There are, of course, a few problems with this plan, though. First, the US has never done anything to actually punish those who were responsible for the program. In fact, the only person in jail for his association with the program is the guy who blew the whistle on it. Second, the intelligence community would have to become a hell of a lot more transparent. While it has actually become marginally more transparent thanks to Ed Snowden, the intelligence community has a long way to go to build back up trust. Releasing this report is the right thing to do. But actually getting people to trust the US intelligence community again is going to take a lot more work.

Filed Under: ambassadors, cia, colin powell, state department, torture, torture report

Business Insider Ridiculously Blames Ed Snowden For All The Damage The NSA Has Caused

from the blame-the-messenger dept

Business Insider isn't exactly known for its hard hitting journalism, but it takes a fairly special level of ridiculousness to take the Open Technology Institute's report from earlier this week, covering just how much damage the NSA has done to our economy, and blame the whole thing on Ed Snowden. Yet that's exactly what BI's Eugene Kim has done. The title is particularly ridiculous:

New Report Shows Edward Snowden's Revelations Are Seriously Damaging U.S. Tech Firms

It's not Snowden's revelations that are the problem here, it's the NSA's actions. But Kim has no time for that. Let's blame the messenger everyone!

The nonprofit New America Foundation released a new report this week that summarizes the impact of Edward Snowden’s NSA revelation on U.S. tech firms.

Because, you know, it's not like anyone should actually put any of the blame on the folks who, you know, actually caused all of that loss in trust by hacking into networks and services and spying on everyone. No, let's blame the guy who blew the whistle on it. Incredible.

Filed Under: damage, ed snowden, eugene kim, journalism, nsa, surveillance, torture report

After CIA Angrily Denied Spying On Senate, CIA Admits It Did And Apologizes

from the incredible dept

Here's a surprise. An internal investigation by the CIA has determined -- just as Senator Dianne Feinstein charged -- that the CIA illegally hacked into the network of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers in order to spy on what they were doing with regards to a report on the CIA's torture program. They did this despite an earlier instance of a similar problem after which the CIA promised it would not touch the Senate Intelligence Committee network any more.

Of course, as you may recall after Feinstein angrily denounced the CIA's actions, and explained them in detail, CIA director John Brennan angrily denied it -- though as we noted, his angry denial really confirmed nearly all of the pertinent details. Still, he specifically stated:

"When the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong."

He also told reporters:

"Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the Senate Intelligence Committee] or the Senate."

Things got even more acrimonious when both sides reported each other to the Justice Department for possible criminal investigation. The CIA insisted that the Senate staffers mishandled classified information, while the Senate claimed that the CIA illegally hacked into their network. Once again, the Senate side of the story made the most sense -- because it had happened before. As you may recall from Feinstein's original explanation:

After a series of meetings, I learned that on two occasions, CIA personnel electronically removed committee access to CIA documents after providing them to the committee. This included roughly 870 documents or pages of documents that were removed in February 2010, and secondly roughly another 50 were removed in mid-May 2010.

This was done without the knowledge or approval of committee members or staff, and in violation of our written agreements. Further, this type of behavior would not have been possible had the CIA allowed the committee to conduct the review of documents here in the Senate. In short, this was the exact sort of CIA interference in our investigation that we sought to avoid at the outset.

After that, the CIA agreed that it would not touch the network in any way. But it did. As Brennan himself explained:

CIA maintains a log of all materials provided to the Committee through established protocols, and these documents do not appear in that log, nor were they found in an audit of CIA's side of the system for all materials provided to SSCI through established protocols. Because we were concerned that there may be a breach or vulnerability in the system for housing highly classified documents, CIA conducted a limited review to determine whether these files were located on the SSCI side of the CIA network and reviewed audit data to determine whether anyone had accessed the files, which would have been unauthorized.

Either way, the DOJ just recently decided to pursue neither claim, but the CIA's moves today more or less admit guilt:

Findings of the investigation by the CIA Inspector General’s Office “include a judgment that some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between SSCI (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) and the CIA in 2009,” CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement.

The statement represented an admission to charges by the panel’s chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the CIA intruded into the computers her staff used to compile the soon-to-be released report on the agency’s use of harsh interrogation methods on suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons during the Bush administration.

CIA Director John Brennan briefed Feinstein and the committee’s vice chairman, Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, on the CIA inspector general’s findings and apologized to them during a meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Boyd said.

“The director . . . apologized to them for such actions by CIA officers as described in the OIG (Office of Inspector General Report),” he said.

That's a pretty different tune than "When the facts come out" all those people "will be proved wrong," huh?

What's incredible about this is that it comes very soon before the redacted version of the CIA torture report that the staffers were working on is expected to be released. Brennan has been the leading voice criticizing the report, but his credibility is sliding increasingly downhill. The news today shows that he appears to have directly lied to the press and the Senate concerning this situation. The more cynical among you will claim that you just assume he's always lying, but that's unfair. For whatever it's worth, the intelligence community is very good about not technically lying, but just misleading people. Here, he was strongly making claims that were clearly just flat out not true.

Others in the Senate are calling for a thorough investigation of Brennan, and it's entirely possible this could result in Brennan being forced to resign. At this point, especially with the report coming out, it seems like the CIA could use a fresh start.

Either way, given that the CIA is now effectively admitting to the charges, it does seem noteworthy to highlight the DOJ's decision not to do anything. After all, as Chris Soghoian points out, if this same bit of hacking were done by a 19 year old hactivist, he'd be rotting in jail, and there would be all sorts of condemnations about what a horrible person he was.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, john brennan, senate, senate intelligence committee, spying, torture report

CIA Snags Confidential Whistleblower Communications Sent To Congress

from the protection-in-name-only dept

The government seems unable (and unwilling) to differentiate between whistleblowers and "insider threats." "Dissatisfaction with US policies" would seem to be a trait inherent to whistleblowers, but that's right up there at the top of the list of warning signs for insider threats. The FBI claimed it had this whistleblower/threat problem sorted out, abelit in the worst way possible: requiring whistleblowers to "register" in order to avoid being caught in the "insider threat" dragnet. But no one can get any details out of the agency as to how "registering" whistleblowers encourages whistleblowing, much less how the FBI handles these registered whistleblowers. When asked, agency officials simply walked away from the conversation.

The CIA is no better, apparently. McClatchy DC reports that the agency intercepted protected whistleblower communications.

The CIA obtained a confidential email to Congress about alleged whistleblower retaliation related to the Senate’s classified report on the agency’s harsh interrogation program, triggering fears that the CIA has been intercepting the communications of officials who handle whistleblower cases.

The CIA got hold of the legally protected email and other unspecified communications between whistleblower officials and lawmakers this spring, people familiar with the matter told McClatchy. It’s unclear how the agency obtained the material.

The agency obviously has ways to dig into protected emails from other government agencies, even if it can't seem to navigate its own internal email system. This news is troublesome enough, but the timeframe of the interception makes it worse. According to McClatchy, this was obtained during the CIA's unauthorized "investigation" of Senate staffers over documents related to the (still unreleased) "Torture Report."

So, while the CIA was digging through the Senate's computers, it was also taking a look at whistleblower-related correspondence.

Somehow, according to these people, [CIA Inspector General David] Buckley obtained the email, which was written by Daniel Meyer, the intelligence community’s top official for whistleblower cases, to the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a leading whistleblower-protection advocate. The Senate Intelligence Committee also learned of the matter, said the knowledgeable people.

After obtaining the email, Buckley approached Meyer’s boss, I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for the 17-agency U.S. intelligence community, in what may have constituted a violation of the confidentiality of the whistleblowing process, they said.

This indicates the proper channels for whistleblowing are inherently (and quite possibly, purposefully) leaky. There's no true protection here, not when the agency being called out can access supposedly protected communications. Kevin Gosztola at Firedoglake says this is a side effect of the "Insider Threat" program's reach.

[T]he interception probably occurred because it was caught by the “Insider Threat” program. The program was adopted throughout government in the aftermath of military whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s disclosures of hundreds of thousands of previously classified documents to WikiLeaks.

McClatchy has exposed the “Insider Threat” program as a system that is sweeping in its capabilities. Any “unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material,” can be targeted. It encourages federal employees and contractor to be suspicious of each other and watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors.” Failure to report on suspicious activity could result in penalties. Plus, the program equates leaks to the media with espionage.

The program keeps profiles of “Disgruntled Employees” and “Insider Threats.” What is there to stop officials from using these profiles to target whistleblowers?

Most whistleblowers are "disgruntled" employees. No one blows the whistle because they're happy with their employer's activities. Intelligence agencies, in particular, are primed for overreaction after Edward Snowden's leaks. Gosztola quotes James Clapper's plans for maintaining near constant surveillance of those granted security clearances.

“What we need is — and this is, I think, pretty much recognized — is a system of continuous evaluation where when someone is in the system and they’re cleared initially, then we have a way of monitoring their behavior, both their electronic behavior on the job as well as off the job to see if there is a potential clearance issue.”

The NSA and CIA see whistleblowers as "threats," no matter if they fit the government's lofty ideal or not. When a CIA official snags protected whistleblower communications, he's simply protecting the agency's operational security, assets, etc. -- whatever justification fits.

Clapper talks a good game about protecting true whistleblowers (i.e., not Snowden, Thomas Drake, etc.), a definition that really shouldn't be left to the Director of National Intelligence to decide -- not with his track record. "True" whistleblower cases would be provided confidentiality safeguards, according to Clapper, although his statements don't specify how these would avoid the dragnet cast over those with security clearances. In this case, the CIA's protections -- whatever they were -- completely failed.

The interception of Meyer’s email would also fall into the category of “such cases” [protected confidential whistleblowers] and apparently the safeguards do not work because the person alleging retaliation was exposed to further retaliation from CIA leadership.

The more defenders of the intelligence community claim there are "proper channels" for whistleblowing while condemning the actions of Snowden and Manning, the more evidence emerges that the proper channels are completely useless. Given this, walking out the door with a hard drive full of documents seems like the sane plan.

Filed Under: charles, chuck grassley, cia, confidential, daniel meyer, david buckley, mccullough, official channels, torture report, whistleblower

Former CIA Boss George Tenet Leading Plans To Attack Upcoming Senate Report On CIA's Torture Program

from the it-will-impact-his-legacy dept

As we continue to wait for the White House to finally release the heavily redacted version of the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's CIA torture report (the full report is over 6,300 pages and cost $40 million to produce), it appears that those who are likely to take the blame are already preparing their response. As has already leaked out over the past few months, the report will show how the program went further than people expected, that it basically uncovered no terrorist plots and that the CIA regularly lied to Congress about the nature of the program and its impact. The CIA, led by current boss John Brennan, has hit back against these conclusions, but it appears that those who were actually in power during the torture program are even more worried. Former CIA boss George Tenet, who was already considered something of a disgrace for the CIA's intelligence failures prior to invading Iraq, is apparently working hard behind the scenes to coordinate an attack on the credibility of the report -- because it pretty clearly is going to attack his credibility.

Just after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted in April to declassify hundreds of pages of a withering report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation program, C.I.A. Director John O. Brennan convened a meeting of the men who had played a role overseeing the program in its seven-year history.

The spies, past and present, faced each other around the long wooden conference table on the seventh floor of the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Northern Virginia: J. Cofer Black, head of the agency’s counterterrorism center at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks; the undercover officer who now holds that job; and a number of other former officials from the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. Over the speakerphone came the distinctive, Queens-accented voice of George J. Tenet.

Over the past several months, Mr. Tenet has quietly engineered a counterattack against the Senate committee’s voluminous report, which could become public next month.

Apparently Tenet and others demanded early access to the report, and eventually Dianne Feinstein, the White House and those former CIA officials negotiated a deal letting them read the report over in James Clapper's offices. The NY Times report also details how Brennan is basically a Tenet lackey whose rise through the ranks occurred under Tenet -- making it more likely that Brennan wants to protect the reputation of his former boss.

We'll see how this eventual "response" comes out, but given the initial leaks from the report, it sounds like it's going to be fairly devastating, and make a further mockery of Tenet. As the report linked above also notes, back in 2007 Tenet got angry at a 60 Minutes interviewer and started wagging his finger at the correspondent, while insisting "We don't torture people!"

Wagging a finger at the correspondent, Scott Pelley, Mr. Tenet said over and over, “We don’t torture people.”

“No, listen to me. No, listen to me. I want you to listen to me,” he went on. “Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through: The palpable fear that we felt on the basis of that fact that there was so much we did not know. I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots.”

It's pretty easy to say that when no one can fact-check you. But it appears that the report is going to point out that almost none of what Tenet said was true. No wonder he's so concerned about leading the attack on the report.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, george tenet, john brennan, senate intelligence committee, torture report, white house

Senator Wyden Toying With The Idea Of Releasing The Senate's CIA Torture Report

from the the-pressure's-on dept

Senator Ron Wyden is apparently getting tired of waiting for the White House to use up its buckets of black ink in redacting everything important in the Senate's big torture report. He's publicly pondering the idea of using Senate privilege to just release it himself.

As you may recall, the Senate Intelligence Committee spent years and $40 million investigating the CIA's torture program, and the 6,000+ page report is supposedly devastating in highlighting (1) how useless the program was and (2) how far the CIA went in torturing people (for absolutely no benefit) and (3) how the CIA lied to Congress about all of this. The CIA, not surprisingly, is not too happy about the report. At all. Still, despite its protests, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify the executive summary of the report.

However, the CIA got to take first crack at figuring out what to redact, which seemed like a massive conflict of interest. Either way, the CIA apparently finally ran out of black ink in late June, and asked the White House to black out whatever else was left. The State Department has already expressed concerns that releasing anything will just anger the public (our response: probably should have thought of that before sending the CIA to torture people). And, now it appears the report is being held up due to "security" concerns.

At least some are getting anxious about this. Senator Wyden has apparently deliberately mentioned Senate Resolution 400 to two separate reporters recently. The key part of Resolution 400 is as follows:

The Select Committee may, subject to the provisions of this section, disclose publicly any information in the possession of such committee after a determination by such committee that the public interest would be served by such disclosure. Whenever committee action is required to disclose any information under this section, the committee shall meet to vote on the matter within five days after any member of the committee requests such a vote. No member of the Select Committee shall disclose any information, the disclosure of which requires a committee vote, prior to a vote by the committee on the question of the disclosure of such information or after such vote except in accordance with this section

Now, this still means he'd need to get the rest of the Committee to go along with the plan, which could be difficult. But, really, it seems that this move is just an effort to remind the White House that if it keeps dragging its feet, the Intelligence Committee (the majority of whom have already supported releasing this document) can take matters into its own hands.

Filed Under: cia, ron wyden, senate intelligence committee, torture report

DOJ Won't Pursue Case Against CIA For Spying On Senate Staffers Or Against Senate Staffers For Handling CIA Documents

from the because-that-would-involve-work dept

As you may recall, a few months back, a big story broke involving the CIA spying on Senate Intelligence Committee staffers who were investigating the CIA's torture program. The details revealed that in the course of their investigation, the CIA had given the staffers an internal document they didn't think they'd given them, which revealed that an internal CIA analysis more or less agreed with the Senate analysis (which has been described as "scathing"). This was a very different position than what the CIA had said publicly. After some in the Senate had asked for the "full report" rather than the draft that the staffers had been given, the CIA believed (incorrectly it appears) that the staffers had gotten access to unauthorized classified materials, and searched the special private network that had been set up just for those staffers. This happened after previous problems with the CIA doing questionable things concerning the Senate staffers network.

In the end, both sides asked the DOJ to investigate the other side. The DOJ has now said that it won't pursue either claim:

"The department carefully reviewed the matters referred to us and did not find sufficient evidence to warrant a criminal investigation," said Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr.

Perhaps this isn't too surprising. The fact that the CIA itself handed the document to the staffers made that claim a pretty clear dead end. However, the CIA searching through the staffers' computer network always seemed a lot more questionable, but perhaps not criminal. It seems likely that the DOJ realized that to pursue either side in this would create a huge political mess, and it was just easier to let the case go, and let the two sides continue to glare angrily at each other.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, doj, senate intelligence committee, spying, torture report

CIA Finishes Its Torture Report Redactions As Relations With Senate Intelligence Committee Have Become 'Strained'

from the shouldn't-they-always-be-that-way dept

As you may recall, back in April, the Senate finally voted to declassify parts of the executive summary of its $40 million, 6,300-page report on the disastrous CIA torture program. Of course, as part of that, the White House said it would let the CIA take a first crack at figuring out what to redact, with the expected answer being "a whole hell of a lot." The CIA has apparently now turned its first draft of redactions over to the White House, which is expected to further redact things, because the State Department is afraid that releasing the report might make people angry at US officials. While that may be true, it would seem that the proper response to that would have been to, you know, not torture people, rather than to hide the report under a bunch of black ink.

Of course, there's a separate meta-drama within all of this, which was the big fight between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee who wrote the report, after it came out that the CIA spied on the Senate staffers working on this report. That got even more messy, when the CIA then asked the DOJ to investigate those Senate staffers for possible crimes, while the Senate also asked the DOJ to investigate if the CIA had broken the law in spying on those staffers' computers. Needless to say, there's been something of a chill in "relations" between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In the Politico report about the CIA handing the report over to the White House, it includes a tidbit at the end, suggesting that the chilly relationship has not thawed at all:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a former Intelligence Committee chairman, said the declassification process has strained relations between the committee and the administration’s intelligence apparatus. The CIA has accused the committee of removing an internal interrogation review from its facilities — and Feinstein has charged that the CIA erred in removing that document from the committee’s computers.

“There’s a code of silence. And it stems from the redaction of this enhanced interrogation, torture report,” Rockefeller said of congressional relations with the CIA.

While the "code of silence" seems stupid and petty, frankly, it's probably a good thing that the sides aren't too chummy. The whole point of the Intelligence Committees in both houses of Congress is supposed to be for oversight of the intelligence community. However, in recent years that's obviously changed into something entirely different, where those Committees seemed much more focused on being the intelligence community's cheerleaders and defenders, rather than overseers. The relationship here should be somewhat adversarial. No one's saying they need to hate each others' guts, but it's pretty clear that bad things happen when the relationship has become downright friendly.

Filed Under: cia, redactions, senate intelligence committee, state department, torture, torture report, white house

Dianne Feinstein Asks DOJ To Investigate Leak Of Torture Report Summary To McClatchy News Service

from the because-only-Senate-staffers-are-allowed-to-access-unauthorized-documents dept

Sen. Feinstein seemed incredibly outraged that her office was spied on by the CIA in its efforts to keep a torture report under wraps. This was noted with some attendant irony, given Feinstein's boisterous support of the NSA's surveillance efforts.

Now, she's stepped into irony again, opening an investigation of McClatchy News for leaking a condensed, bullet-points-only summation of the findings hidden within the still-unreleased 6,600-page "torture report."

The Senate Intelligence Committee has opened an investigation into how McClatchy obtained the classified conclusions of a report into the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, the panel’s chairwoman said Friday.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she was also referring the case to the Justice Department for investigation.

“If someone distributed any part of this classified report, they broke the law and should be prosecuted,” Feinstein said in a prepared statement. “The committee is investigating this unauthorized disclosure and I intend to refer the matter to the Department of Justice.”

Unauthorized disclosure, maybe. But it's looking more and more like the only way Americans are ever going to see the inside of the infamous report is via unauthorized channels, what with the CIA asking for redaction privileges. This is the same Senator who fought the CIA over control of this report, only now she wants to control how the information is fed to the public.

The investigation of the CIA wasn't performed just because Washington had money to waste. Supposedly this was done in the public interest, even if almost everyone involved has done as much as they can to keep the information out of the public's hands. It's the kind of government no one wants: one that internalizes its investigative efforts and withholds the findings. The public is frequently treated like an unwanted side effect of governing. "Shut up," Feinstein explained, "or we'll make you regret ever speaking up."

Disappointing, yes. But worse, it's predictable. McClatchy isn't happy.

“We are disappointed that Sen. Feinstein plans to seek a Justice Department investigation of our journalism,” said James Asher, McClatchy’s Washington bureau chief. “We believe that Americans need to know what the CIA might have done to detainees and who is responsible for any questionable practices, which is why we have vigorously covered this story.”

Asher is right about the public knowing, which is ostensibly the endpoint of investigations like these. But now that it's all been compiled, representatives are (somewhat inadvertently) joining forces with the same agency they decried and throwing as much dirt as they can over any exposure. There's a slim chance that much of the 480-page "executive summary" will survive the rounds of redactions headed its way. For McClatchy to release a 2-page summary is a drop in bucket compared to the voluminous whole.

The DOJ will now (possibly) start searching for yet another whistleblower, one who felt the refusal to discuss the contents beyond vague generalities was an intellectually dishonest move by those heading the investigation. But it's even more wrongheaded for Feinstein to request an investigation into this leaked document, only a few months removed from the CIA asking the DOJ to investigate Feinstein's staffers for their "unauthorized removal" of documents. It's apparently OK to take "unauthorized" documents if you're a Senator, but not so much if you're a journalist.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, doj, leaks, reporting, torture report
Companies: mcclatchy